Limbo
by silk1
Summary: A Post- THE MESSAGE fic. What do you know about war? A Mal River encounter - NOT a shipper!


DISCLAIMER: NOT MINE …….Hail Joss Whedon the Genius!

Notes: Okay just a really short little thingy that I had been mulling over for a little time.

It´s Post- The Message…..

LIMBO

„ Things do not explode. They fail …..they fade …." It was the faintest whisper, not more than a breath.

Malcolm Reynolds looked up from the tin cup in his hand. He´d been staring into it for quite a while now, nursing it in his hand, letting the hard liquor slowly travel down his throat until he could feel the alcohol making its way into his blood- stream. He was not as drunk as he wanted to be …yet. When he hadn´t been staring into the cup and the amber liquid it held he was staring out into the empty darkness of Serenity´s cargo bay

She stood at the other end of the catwalk, half shrouded in darkness. Almost as though the dark was clinging to her, unwilling to let her go and give her over to the light. But there was no light here, Mal had made sure of that. He didn´t need light, didn´t want it right now.

Her presence had something eerie, something strange and unsettling, but then again ….that was all part of who River was. As though she could always hone in on things imperceptible…..and right now Mal knew exactly what it was that she was honing in on.

She'd been at the funeral too.

"Things ….go awry so fast, some things are bound to, not meant to be changed; sacrifices, victims ….the spoils of war."

Mal shook his head about to loose control of his anger.

_What do you know?_

Looking at her face as River stepped closer, seeing the dark rings under her eyes, knowing what her brother had told them about her  Mal realized that River Tam might know a thing or two about war.

His pain about losing a comrade, about the betrayal and the feeling of still having failed him somehow, was different from whatever she carried around inside that frail body of hers.

And yet ..it was pain all the same ….There were scars you never saw, wounds that never healed.

He could see it in her just as clear as she could sense it in him.

"Every night and every morn´ some to misery are born. Every morn´ and every night some are born to sweet delight …..some are born to endless night."

She laughed at her own recital but it was not a happy sound, but raw and violent enough to hurt one´s ears. Her anguish almost a tangible thing in the air, almost palpable ….

"Sometimes they come back like that, bits and pieces of my life … verses, rhymes of lessons learned. And I remember …I see…..I feel. I see myself …..who I was, who I should be but it´s slippery like eels and I cannot hold on …."

She shook her head again, taking a shuddering breath.

"I´m stuck….in limbo. Just like you …."

" I´m not …"

"Stuck between this hell and the next. You don´t sleep easy…you don´t live here. You left part of you behind in the trenches…you cut that part off …..you went."

River looked at him, her hands balled to fists, her hair in disarray. Her pretty face that so often reminded him of a perfect china doll was contorted as though she was in pain, tears rolling down her pale cheeks.

"You went ….you decided to leave yourself …..that part behind and yet you dwell there, you grieve and you …..suffer…! Returning at your leisure…." She took a seething breath to steady herself.

"I didn´t ….I grieve and I suffer and ….I never chose, I never decided! They ripped me apart, took something from me somehow …..and I can not  teach the lark to sing or to fly. There is no way back! You don´t need to live here…..things fail, nobody´s fault! Not mine, not yours ….not Simon´s. Blame is not a bucket to go round and round!"

Mal opened his mouth to say something, but he wasn´t sure what to say. He wasn´t sure if he caught her meaning right. But if wasn´t entirely mistaken River Tam had just told him in no uncertain terms to stop feeling sorry for himself.

"You don´t need to live there…." She said again, shaking her head. Suddenly the energy seemed to be drained from her, her anger fading like smoke in the air.

"I´m not death´s handmaiden …." River whispered before she turned around to disappear back into the darkness she had come from.

Malcolm Reynolds looked back into the amber liquid in his tin cup, leaning his elbows onto the railing of the catwalk.

_What do you know about war?_

_Everything.___


End file.
